Big Democratic donor advising Rendell on Election Day plan

Senate GOP calls idea for state assistance "hopelessly tainted.'

October 19, 2004|By John M.R. Bull Of The Morning Call

A big-gun Democratic donor who helped Al Gore's post-election legal battle in 2000 is a key adviser in a Rendell administration plan to send state bureaucrats into county election bureaus on Election Day.

As a result, state Senate Republicans are calling for the demise of the Democratic governor's proposal, which surfaced last week.

"We are no longer skeptical of this initiative; rather, we are stunned," the Republicans said in a letter sent Monday to the administration. "This effort, however conceived, is hopelessly tainted and should be abandoned."

The Republicans said that Mark Aronchick, a Philadelphia lawyer involved in the proposal, raised $100,000 for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. Aronchick has criticized President George W. Bush in a newspaper story, calling him an "evil force" with a "contemptible pseudosincerity."

Aronchick is a top legal adviser in the administration's drafting of a plan over the past two weeks to put watchers into each of the 67 county election bureaus and election courts on Election Day -- just two weeks from today. The observers are not being put in polling places.

Those watchers would come from the ranks of state managers who are gubernatorial appointees and not civil service employees.

According to the administration's plan: Half of those watchers will be attorneys. They will come from any state department, and will be given cell phones and a dedicated number to the state Department of State, which oversees elections.

They are to "assist" county election bureau directors if problems arise, but the administration hasn't said what problems are expected, or what the Department of State will do with the information. The state lacks legal standing to intervene in Election Day legal disputes. Candidates and parties can intervene.

Republicans said they suspect that the state's watchers will be used as eyes and ears for the Democratic Party to coordinate legal challenges on Election Day, which would be using state-paid employees for partisan political advantage.

Representatives of the Rendell administration rejected that notion, saying the plan merely was creating a nonpartisan system to ensure an error-free election. Rendell has taken several steps in recent months to head off election trouble.

On Monday, after Republicans urged the plan be scrapped, the administration invited all four legislative caucuses to send observers to the Department of State on Election Day to see what is done with the information coming from election bureau watchers in the field.

The watcher program is being run by the state Department of State and Office of General Counsel. Aronchick is giving it free legal advice, according to Kate Philips, a Rendell spokeswoman.